Hi everyone my name is Peter (59yrs) (Vegetarian) and in March 2016 I was told I had Oesopagheal cancer and that the tumour was 11cm, one of the bigger ones they said they have seen. Of course at that point my whole world collapsed, I already have a 26 year old son who has been on Oxygen for 23 years and needs a double Lung and Heart transplant and now this! They told me the hoops I had to jump through before they would decide whether they were going to operate or not, ie, Pet scan, Endoscopy with ultra-sound, MRI scan and finally the Laparoscopy. I mistakenly thought that time was of the essence when Cancer had been detected but nothing could have be further from the truth, The Four staging tests I mentioned seemed to take for ever, also at the time the NHS staff were going on strike, and I just had this feeling that this thing was getting bigger and that they were giving it a good chance to spread.
The plan was Nine weeks of Chemo ECX, thats One day introveinous Chemo at the Hospital from 8am to 5pm, (if there are no complications). Then Three weeks of taking tablets and then start the same all over again. Then a break of a few weeks, then the big 9 hour operation. Then a break, then back to the same Chemo regime as before.
Five days after the Laparoscopy I had a bleed and vomited about Two pints of blood up, my wife phoned 999 and I was rushed to hospital, given a blood transfusion and then they were contemplating performing an unplanned emergency Oesophagectomy,
luckily for me they phoned my consultant surgeon and he said he wanted me back at his hospital. In order to stop me from having another major bleed they decided to use Radiotherapy to shrink the blood vessels in the tumour and stop it bleeding. This seemed to do the job although I was still really worried and cautious about eating leading up to the operation. After the operation I woke up in recovery and I had only been awake about a minute when a member of the theatre staff appeared from behind and said "the operation went ok but the surgeon slipped with his knife cut into my Spleen, he could not stop the bleeding so removed my Spleen but thats alright" then quickly went away before I could ask anything. Within Five minutes the surgeon came and basically told me the same thing amd assured me I could carry on alright without a Spleen. They had me out of hospital in Nine days with a feeding tube in my gut, I wasn't a weighty person (11 stone) to begin with and lost so much weight I went down to 9 stone. When I started the second course of Chemo my body couldn't handle it, I went in at 8am and didn't come out for a week, I was Anorexic and had Sepsis as well as numerous other problems which are too many to list here. While I was in hospital the Oncologist turned up and said he would reduce the Chemo dose, I told him thats it, I'm not taking Chemo anymore, a decision which I really believed saved my life, if I kept on with the Chemo I don't think I would be here now, I was just too weak.
I had my Ivor Lewis Op on 7/7/2016, my Daughters 21st Birthday. I had my feeding tube out in Jan 2017 which was a great day cos I'd learned to hate that thing. Its getting on for 15 months now and I'm just starting to really get to grips with food/myweight/cooking/frequency of meals, its a steep learning curve and a big change to make in a short ime when you are not feeling very well. I still have pain although its subsided a lot to what it was like. The mornings are still hit & miss, sometimes after breakfast I feel fine, others I feel nauseous for about an hour and an half.
I hope my story helps instill hope into anyone going through the same, I remember too clearly how down I felt, in some ways the mental anguish is worse than the pain. The only medication I take now are Lansoprazole in the morning and anti-biotic twice a day for life cos they took my Spleen out.
